Gunmen from a notorious militia roamed Sudan’s capital gang-raping “countless” women and girls, some as young as nine, according to an investigation documenting the shocking prevalence of sexual violence in Khartoum during the country’s civil war.
Some of the attacks by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were so brutal that women and girls died “due to the violence associated with the act of rape”, according to the research by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Accounts from women and girls in areas of Khartoum seized by the RSF indicate many were abducted, tortured and imprisoned as sex slaves. Mothers were raped attempting to protect their daughters.
Some girls told RSF fighters they were married and not virgins in an attempt to avoid being attacked, added the report.
“The RSF have raped, gang-raped and forced into marriage countless women and girls in residential areas in Sudan’s capital,” said Laetitia Bader, HRW’s Horn of Africa director.
Shortly after the civil war erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese military 15 months ago, the RSF overran parts of Khartoum and its sister cities, Omdurman and Khartoum North.
Access to the capital has since been hampered by fighting, but HRW researchers interviewed 42 care providers, social workers, lawyers and emergency volunteers in Khartoum to establish how women and girls had been treated.
At least 262 survivors of sexual violence were documented, aged between nine and 60.
On several occasions, emergency volunteers were themselves raped by RSF fighters as they tried to help survivors of sexual violence, the report said.
Collectively, the testimony reveals a hellish existence for huge numbers of women and girls in the Sudanese capital. One 20-year-old woman told researchers: “I slept with a knife under my pillow for months in fear from the raids that lead to rape by RSF.
“It is not safe any more to be a woman living in Khartoum under RSF,” she said.
A midwife in Khartoum told researchers of the constant anxiety women faced: “We are afraid all the time from RSF raids into our homes. We can’t sleep from this fear. Daily, there is a raid on a house; they try to rape women.”
At least four women and girls died from their injuries after being raped, with many others requiring hospital treatment, said the report. One teenage girl was shot in the thigh after being raped by a group of RSF soldiers and died in hospital “from heavy bleeding caused by the bullets”.
Bader urged the African Union and United Nations to deploy a civilian protection force to prevent further war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The report also accused soldiers belonging to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of sexual violence against the people of Khartoum. Although fewer cases were attributed to the state military, researchers documented an “uptick” in cases after SAF took control of Omdurman in early 2024. Men and boys have also been raped, including in detention, according to the report.
HRW said both sides had blocked survivors’ access to critical emergency healthcare and had attacked healthcare workers, which constitutes a war crime.
It said SAF was “wilfully restricting humanitarian supplies”, including medical supplies, by imposing a de facto blockade on aid entering RSF-controlled areas of Khartoum since October.
Neither side, added the report, had taken “meaningful steps” to prevent its forces from committing rape or attacking health workers, or even to independently and transparently investigate crimes committed by their forces.
However, a statement from Babikir Elamin, spokesperson of the Sudanese foreign ministry, contested the report’s findings, adding: “As far as Sudanese Armed Forces are concerned, this report contains unsubstantiated allegations that have obviously never been cross-examined or put forward to SAF to respond to.
“We categorically deny the defamatory suggestion by the report’s author that SAF or the government of Sudan condones sexual violence at any time.
“Equally, there is no truth in accusing SAF of targeting healthcare providers. The report offers no evidence to prove this accusation. Currently, working hospitals and health facilities in areas controlled by SAF are confined to areas controlled and protected by SAF, including around 400 out of 540 governmental hospitals.
“Contrary to the claims in the report that SAF blocks delivery of medical supplies, it is SAF who protects, guards and often undertakes delivery of these supplies, including using air dropping.”
A number of accounts given by survivors revealed that they were raped by as many as five RSF fighters.
The RSF also “regularly abducted” women and girls and confined them in homes, according to the report. Some women were detained for weeks. Many were beaten, tortured and denied access to food in conditions that researchers said constituted sexual slavery.
“Two girls, sisters, we supported told me that RSF raped them and the other women in the house every day, for the three days they spent in detention,” said a service provider and women’s rights defender.
She added that the sisters were held in a big house alongside a large number of women and girls from South Sudan and Ethiopia. “They described being beaten, deprived of food and forced to wash the clothes of the forces every day,” the report stated.
Health professionals interviewed said they were “shocked” by the targeting of young girls.
At least three pregnancies of 15-year-old girls resulting from rape by the RSF and one case by the Sudanese military, in Khartoum North, were documented in the report.
The RSF wrote to HRW last week to reject claims that it occupied any hospitals or medical centres in Khartoum, but did not offer any evidence it had conducted investigations into allegations of sexual violence by its forces.
Elamin, the foreign ministry spokesperson, added: “SAF is an ancient national army, almost a hundred years old, whose leadership as well as file and ranks are highly disciplined, professional and well versed in international humanitarian law and the best-known military norms and rules.
“Protecting civilians, especially women and children, is on the top of the SAF and government of Sudan’s priorities.”
He added that the government had a robust “unit for protecting women and children under its ministry of social development and welfare” and pointed out that a number of organisations had never accused SAF of such heinous crimes.
Elamin also contested the report’s reference to “warring parties” as “unfair and misleading”.
He said the army could not be compared with an “externally backed militia, made up essentially of mercenaries” that employs the same tactics and brutality used by Isis [Islamic State].”
